


Ambidextrous

by anselm0



Category: Starsky & Hutch
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexuality, Fortune Telling, Internalized Homophobia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-04-05 02:26:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19039291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anselm0/pseuds/anselm0
Summary: An encounter with a fortune teller makes Starsky own up to the fact that he's in love with his partner. Now he just has to tell Hutch.





	Ambidextrous

**Author's Note:**

> Minus a few edits, this fic first appeared in the SHareCon 2018 Zine. Massive thanks to zine editor Cyanne for her feedback, and to Flamingo and all the other CONspirators for putting on a fantastic weekend.

“You can’t do this. You don’t have a warrant. This is illegal search and seizure.”

Starsky takes a sip of his coffee to give himself a moment. She’s not raising her voice, and the barely veiled fury in that conversational volume is weirdly unnerving. It’s taking him back to his childhood somehow.

“We don’t need a warrant, Madam Balandin; you’re only leasing this space from the pier authority and your lease gives them the right to grant police access. Besides, we’re not seizing anything unless it’s illegal.”

Madam Balandin crosses her arms under her large bosom and gives him a narrow-eyed glare. “This is my private property.”

“If you bring it on the pier, it’s not.”

“Who called you? Who told you I’m a criminal?”

“The pier authority called us but not about you specifically. We’re doing a full sweep of all the vendors.” He gestures with his coffee cup down the mostly empty pier where, indeed, there are a couple of uniforms poking through stacks of stuffed animals and under trays of handmade jewelry while the stall owners stand by with their arms crossed. Everybody looks pretty bored. Hutch is chatting with one of the human statues who showed up early to stake out a spot before the mid-morning tourists arrive. Just Starsky’s luck that he would happen to supervise the one person getting bent out of shape over the third routine check-in after one of the food stalls got found out selling prescription pills with their daily specials. Norden and Duchamp are wisely keeping their heads down as they go through her things as quickly as possible.

Madam Balandin’s accent thickens for effect as she declares, “So this is America! I come from Ukraine to escape bitter winter and Soviet government but look!” She gestures vehemently, “California weather is just grey and damp and American government is no different. Nowhere people can go about their business in peace.”

Pressing out the tension in his brow that’s threatening to become a headache, Starsky wishes he had chosen any other stall to stand next to. Although he wouldn’t completely rule out the possibility that Dobey set this up to make this stupid supervising-the-uniforms assignment a real punishment. He’s definitely regretting lying about his concussion so that he could see the last case through. “Look, at this point, we have no reason to think you’re doing anything illegal. Just relax, okay? We’ll be out of your hair in a few minutes and you can put your turban on and go back to your crystal ball.”

Madam Balandin purses her lips and crosses her arms tighter, pinching up her whole body like she’s restraining herself. “That is why you think I’m a drugs dealer?”

“I don’t think you’re—”

“You think I’m a liar. You think I can only make money if I’m selling drugs.”

“I didn’t say that!”

“Stop that!” Even as she says it, the box in Norden’s hands opens from the bottom and a bunch of lumpy looking dice clatter onto the pier. They all freeze as the dice scatter over the boards, bouncing and rolling wildly. One gets stuck between the boards, but two others fall down into the rocky shallows below. The surf and the gulls are too loud, but Starsky imagines they can all hear the _plop-plop_ of the dice hitting the water.

Norden looks stricken. Starsky doesn’t blame him; Balandin has slightly scrawny limbs and a round belly, but she has the kind of presence like she could take any two of them in a fight. Now that she’s furious about her lost dice, Starsky wouldn’t bet on the three of them against her. The second Norden meets her gaze, he stops stammering and dives to pick up the dice. Duchamp hurriedly turns around and clearly hopes to fade into the background.

“I want to apologize,” Starsky says, and immediately regrets speaking when it draws Balandin’s attention back to him. “For Officer Norden. The Bay City Police Department apologizes for the accidental loss of your—dice. And the inconvenience.”

“Wait,” Norden says. “Are these _bones_?” On second glance, they don’t have any dots like you’d expect on dice.

Starsky decides that it’s too early for dead bodies and he doesn’t know enough about bones to say one way or another. “Just tell me that they are definitely not human bones.”

“They’re goat knuckles.”

“That’s all I needed to know. Goat knuckles.” Norden is still gaping at him, so Starsky shoots him a quelling look. He smiles his most charming smile at Madam Balandin. “We’ll be done here soon. Sorry again for the accident.”

She keeps glaring at him. “I learned how to tell fortunes from goat knuckles from a woman in my village in Ukraine. That box is made special so people can roll them without throwing them all over the floor.” She continues speaking after Norden sheepishly replaces the box to her table, “I’m not a fake like that stupid _pindos_ with her playing cards and glass ball. I’m not a liar.”

“I’m sure you aren’t.” Starsky tries to drink from his cup, which turns out to be empty already, and prays for deliverance. What’s the point of having a partner if he doesn’t save you from crazy Ukrainian fortune tellers?

“You called me a liar. I am not a liar.” She jerks her chin at his hands. “Show me. I’ll prove it.”

Starsky suddenly realizes that she reminds him powerfully of his grandfather. He was also full of complaints about the weather and beady-eyed suspicion of the government. He had even been a Communist, but that was before Starsky had been born and seemed to be more out of general orneriness than political convictions. Mostly Starsky remembers what it felt like to be pinned down under his gaze and general air of looking for the right person to direct the full force of his bad mood at. He has a feeling she’s unlikely to let this go. Resigning himself to it, Starsky puts his empty cup aside and holds out his hands.

Balandin flicks her gaze between his hands and his face before grabbing them. “Interesting.”

“What’s interesting?”

“Usually people just give the strong hand. You give strong hand and weak hand. Very interesting.”

“Well, I can do a bunch of stuff with my right hand, too.”

“Be quiet.” She peers closely at his left hand, dragging her gaze down from his wrist to each finger one at a time, then switches to his right. Starsky looks, too. They look basically the same, but maybe the creases on his right hand look deeper and there are more on his left. His left is also more callused from the grip of his gun and the way he holds his pencil. Madam Balandin hums thoughtfully.

“What? What does that mean?” She shushes him.

Duchamp clears his throat. “Um, we’re done here, Detective Starsky. We’re going to do the funnel cake stand, okay?”

“Yeah, okay. Hey, take that cup before it blows away.” Starsky barely notices Norden obey, watching Madam Balandin’s frowning face as she stretches out the skin between his thumb and forefinger to count the lines there. He can just imagine what Hutch would say about how quickly he started falling for her act but he can’t help it. He’s always been a sucker for the promise of knowing for sure.

“You are careless,” she tells his palms, still pressing and pulling to see the shape of the lines. “Listen to people who tell you so. Your heart does not want to be hard, but you must keep watch; your job is very heavy on it. Good heart for now, full and many people to care for it. Keep them close, but do not be too eager to love those who will not care for you.”

That doesn’t sound so bad, though she says it in the same tone she used when she was accusing him of conducting an illegal search. Starsky also knows in the part of his mind that’s keeping some objective distance from this situation that it’s pretty generic, but he can’t help but feel that it’s also right on the money. Isn’t he on this stupid assignment because he was careless about his own safety? Hadn’t he done that because he just couldn’t stand not to do everything he could for the Korean families who lost their businesses to arson? Aren’t Dobey and Hutch and his mother all furious with him over it because they care about him?

“That’s pretty good,” he admits. Trying to keep it light, he grins. “Can you see my future? Is there a beautiful woman waiting for me?”

“Your future is not on your palm,” she tells him scornfully, practically throwing his hand at him. “There is no destiny. You want some pretty story about meeting a tall dark stranger, see that _pindos_ next to the ice cream shop. I only tell you the truth.”

Starsky stuffs his hands into his pockets, somehow disappointed as well as relieved and feeling doubly stupid for feeling either way, let alone both at the same time. “You charge people money for that kind of truth? You didn’t say anything that isn’t true of anybody or you couldn’t guess from the fact that I’m a cop. You didn’t know anything about my childhood, or is the past not on my hand either?”

“That is not all I saw, only all you will hear.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” There’s a part of Starsky that knows he should walk away. This whole thing is pointless. It isn’t like he wants her to like him, which is clearly not going to happen in any case. He can just go and complain with Hutch about this and the whole week of similarly dumb assignments, but he doesn’t. There’s just something about the things she said that feels like being undercover and in danger of blowing it. He has to know what she sees.

“I can handle whatever it is, lady. I can hear whatever you saw. Otherwise I don’t believe that you know what you’re talking about.”

“I know!” She turns away toward the mess Norden and Duchamp made of her things. Opening the upside-down box, she scowls at the incomplete set of pieces. “ _Chyort musor_! You see how careless you are, pushing me to tell you your own secrets? You’re a fool, begging to hear what you already know.”

Being called a fool actually makes him feel a lot better. The whole bit about giving his heart to people who wouldn’t love him back hit a little close to home. For a second there, Starsky was sure she could see right through him to the secrets he hasn’t told anyone and the mistake he’s almost positive only he remembers, but now she’s trying to trick him into not asking for details. Not a bad technique on the misdirect, but Starsky didn’t get out of the academy yesterday; he can tell when he’s being led around.

Lightened with relief, he relaxes his posture, practically bouncing on his toes. “You’re probably right, Mrs. Balandin. Sorry, _Madam_ Balandin. I’ll just get out of your hair, no harm done. You have a nice day, okay?”

Beaming in spite of her glare, Starsky startles a bit when Hutch materializes at his side, a steadying hand on his shoulder.

“Everything okay, Starsk? You know you were shouting a bit earlier.”

There’s about one inch of air between them, which isn’t unusual but suddenly feels like a kind of sign he doesn’t want anyone to start looking for. Acutely aware of their audience, Starsky can hardly bear to look Hutch in the face. “We were just having a conversation. About the future.”

Hutch seems to notice the sign advertising Madam Balandin’s various soothsaying skills and groans. “Starsky, why didn’t you just go to the funnel cake stand? You know you’re too gullible by half to be listening to a fortune teller. No offense,” he smiles at Madam Balandin, who looks slightly more willing to be charmed by him than she was by Starsky. Starsky doesn’t blame her. “He gets too invested and starts seeing signs everywhere.”

“Yes,” she agrees, as if she already knew that. After a moment of consideration, she snaps the box shut again and holds out a hand to Hutch. “Let me see.”

Hutch hesitates but gives in, reluctantly pulling his right hand out of his jacket pocket. He quickly rolls his eyes at Starsky over her head. Starsky manages a smile back. He doesn’t think Madam Balandin is the real deal, but this seems like a risk too far. How’s that for careless?

“Okay,” she finally concludes, dropping Hutch’s hand much more gently than she had tossed Starsky’s.

“Now this one?” Hutch holds out his left. Starsky’s breath catches and he meets Balandin’s eye against his will. She looks surprised too, but looks Hutch’s left hand over as well, even longer than she did on his right. Starsky’s own hands are clenched into fists and jammed as hard into his pockets as he can without tearing them.

“Hm,” she muses when she’s done, taking a step back from Hutch and considering his face. “You will have a big choice soon, I think.”

There’s a pause as Hutch waits for more information that doesn’t come. “That’s it?”

Madam Balandin’s smile is small but very smug. “That’s all you get for free.”

Automatically, they both check the sign for rates. A basic palm reading is $15, or a full reading for $20.

“You charge _twenty dollars_ for that!”

Putting a restraining hand on his chest, Hutch smoothly de-escalates. “Thank you, Madam Baladin.”

“Balandin,” she and Starsky correct him, and then she glares at Starsky, probably out of habit at this point.

“Balandin,” Hutch repeats, putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable to enunciate the first N. “We’re going to go finish up the contraband sweep. Thank you for your cooperation and please call the department if you have any information.”

Hutch pulls him away from her stall, not quick enough to get out of earshot before Starsky explodes, “Twenty dollars! Twenty!”

“Yeah, I saw, Starsk.”

“ _Twenty frigging dollars_! That’s highway robbery!”

“Sure is,” Hutch says agreeably, still herding him down the boardwalk. “Hey, you lose your coffee?”

“I finished it. No wonder she’s not bothering with selling dope, charging twenty dollars a pop for some nonsense about hearts and whatever!”

“Okay, well, I got a hookup for some coffee from the kids working the ring toss. They have a percolator set up under the counter. You want one?”

They’re at the Torino. It must be close to nine now; the last of the early morning surfers and beach runners are clearing out ahead of the first beachgoers. There’s a girl with legs for days at the next car, wrapped up in two different towels and stomping her feet to keep warm as her boyfriend takes the time to carefully wipe the sand off his board before he opens the car door. She looks very annoyed, and he is clearly unaware as he tells her about the waves he caught. Starsky feels a bit annoyed on her behalf, getting all gussied up for a beach date and ending up cold and neglected. He catches her eye and smiles sympathetically, but she scowls harder and turns away. There must be something about today; he’s really off his game.

Starsky flinches when Hutch puts his hand in his jeans pocket. Hutch shows him the keys he pulled out and shakes his head as he unlocks the door. “Jeez, you’re jumpy today. I retract my offer of more coffee.”

“Huh?”

Hutch pushes him into the seat, even guiding his head to duck under the door frame as if Starsky was a handcuffed perp. Starsky feels like an idiot for getting a little flutter in his chest over it. Automatically, he catches the keys Hutch tosses him.

“Go ahead and call in that we’re done here. I’ll finish up with the uniforms.”

Hutch kicks Starsky’s feet into the car and shuts the door. As he walks back around the hood of the car, the clouds briefly part and the weak sunlight shines on his blond hair. Squinting a bit, Hutch waits with his hands on his hips for a couple of women with baby carriages to pass. He looks like one of those models for clothing worn only by people who take vacation time to sleep in a bag on the ground.

“Unbelievable.” Cursing himself for predictability as well as idiocy, Starsky calls in their status. The dispatch officer isn’t willing to chat or listen to him complain about their detail, so he turns on the radio and watches the couple at the next car.

The girl, who vaguely reminds him of a woman he saw a couple of times last year before she got fed up with his hours, pastes on a smile that passes for accommodating whenever her boyfriend turns his attention on her. He eventually notices her shivering and props his board against the back bumper to open the passenger side door for her. He doesn’t seem to be a bad guy, but he’s clueless enough to leave the car entirely, not even putting on the heat first, rather than get going as soon as possible. Starsky figures this is probably an early stage of the relationship, and he doesn’t expect it to last long. In fact, he’s pretty sure that if he went over and offered to let the girlfriend warm up in his car, he could leave here with her number and a hot date Friday night.

He watches his hands tap along with the radio on the steering wheel as if they were foreign objects. No, he’s not going to do it. He’s getting too sentimental in his old age, or too jaded in his experience, to approach women on the street just because they’re attractive. It doesn’t often end up being a good time and he wants to start out with some mutual understanding with whoever he goes out with. He has a bad habit of getting in deep emotionally and then it turns out that she doesn’t want to date a cop after all, just like Madam Balandin said.

Irritated, Starsky switches the radio off and sticks his hands between his legs to warm them up and avoid looking at them. It’s stupid to get all worked up over something a fake fortune teller said. She’s probably smart enough to be able to read people, and she used that con artist skill to say just the right thing to rile him up. It’s not great that she could read him well enough to say just the right thing about Hutch, too, but they’re going to leave in a few minutes and that’ll be the end of it.

As if summoned by the optimistic thought, Starsky sees Madam Balandin stalking her way up the boardwalk toward him. “Don’t come over here,” he prays out loud, slouching down a bit in the seat even though she’s clearly already seen him. “Turn left. Turn right, turn back, just don’t—Hutch, would you quit making friends with the statues and get back here already!”

Madam Balandin raps on the passenger window, looking thunderous. She doesn’t have a turban but Starsky sees she’s put on a thick layer of eyeliner and an abundance of jewelry to look more like a fortune teller. Her rings are very loud on the glass as she keeps knocking and glaring until he rolls down the window.

“Listen, if it’s about the money—”

“I don’t want your money. You wanted to know what I see in your hands. Listen to me, Detective Starsky, because I take my craft seriously.” She still sounds angry. Practically lying across the front seats to get to the passenger window crank, Starsky feels like a bug on a pin under her gaze.

She speaks slowly, pointedly. “Your lifeline is split. One path left behind you, though you did not realize it then, and one before you now. You cannot go back and you cannot leave this path without pain. You know the path is dangerous. It could destroy you. You know what I am saying. Do not try to go back. The time when you could have taken the other path is past. You know the path you are on, you must take it. You understand.”

And he does. She’s still talking in general terms but he knows what she means and he knows that, somehow, she knows. A cold, clammy sick feeling washes over him like the oily waves under the pier. _She knows_. And if she could figure it out, who else might?

Balandin watches all this play out on his face and nods once. “You know. And tell that idiot who dropped my goat knuckles to stop being such an ass to his family.” She tosses this off as she turns away, apparently satisfied with the effect of her pronouncement.

Starsky rolls the window back up and sits, holding onto the steering wheel like a life saver. She knows. He doesn’t know how, but she knows the whole stupid, sorry thing. Hutch will—

She has absolutely no proof, Starsky reminds himself. Even if she said something, nobody would believe her. Even if Hutch remembered, which he doesn’t, he probably wouldn’t give it a second thought. He knows Starsky dates girls, falls in love and gets his heart broken by them often enough to be a sap but a _normal_ sap. And even if he got the wrong idea about it, Hutch was pretty understanding about John Blaine. Although it would be different if it was his partner, wouldn’t it, with their lives all wrapped up in each other like they are. If he found out all the jokes they get about their touchy-feely friendship aren’t just jokes, there’s no way Hutch could just be alright with it.

Starsky bangs his forehead against the steering wheel a couple of times. “No proof, no proof,” he tells himself sternly. Madam Balandin isn’t going to say anything, so freaking out about it ruining his life is just letting her win.

Another tap on the window makes him jerk upright fast enough to hit the back of his head on his own seat.

“You know,” Hutch says pleasantly as Starsky opens the door for him. “If hitting you on the head fixed any of your problems, you would have been problem-free long before today.” He takes a sip of his coffee and passes the other to Starsky. “I’m implying you’ve had a lot of brain damage.”

“I got it, thanks.”

“Just making sure, on account of the brain damage.”

“And yet you said you weren’t getting me coffee and now there’s coffee in my hand. Did you get hit with a baseball bat on your way down the pier?”

“I got distracted and made one for you on accident. I didn’t want to throw it out and it’s not like I’m going to drink something that sugary.”

Starsky takes a drink. It is indeed a cream and three sugars, which isn’t a surprise since Hutch and he have been fixing each other coffee for years. It still makes him feel warm. He feels warmer still when Hutch’s voice changes to his serious, tell-it-to-me-straight tone and he asks, “You okay?”

“I’m fine.” And just for a second, Starsky lets himself imagine that Hutch could be alright with it. “Why’d you show her both your hands?”

Hutch rolls his eyes but treats it like a real question about a real thing and not a non-sequitur about a silly game he doesn’t believe in. “I don’t know. I guess if you’ve got two hands and one hand can tell you the future, _supposedly_ , then the other one should tell you something, too.”

“I showed her both of mine,” Starsky confesses. “But she says the future isn’t on your hands, just the past and the present.”

Hutch frowns. “Well, you heard her. The only thing she told me was I would make a decision in the future. What’d she tell you?”

“Oh, you know,” Starsky hands him his cup so he can start the car and pull out into the street. At some point during his minor panic attack, the couple ahead of them had left without his realizing. Now he’ll never know what the boyfriend left the car to do. “Just some vague stuff about my job and things. Nothing specific. Garbage, really.”

“Uh-huh,” Hutch gives him the fish eye as the coffee changes hands again in perfect synchronicity at the light. “So you’re not going to get hung up on any of it.”

“Aw, you know me, Hutch. I’m already hung up.”

 

* * *

 

When Starsky was in high school, not too long before his dad died, his mother trapped him at the table with a blueberry pie still warm from the oven, melting the ice cream almost as fast as he was able to eat it. His mother hated standing over the hot stove while the pie filling got to the exact right temperature, so he should have known it was bait. “Davey, you’re almost grown and since your father is _useless_ ,” she had started out brusquely, of course not knowing what was to come, “there are some things _I_ have to tell you.”

He was fifteen at the time, still clumsy from his growth spurt and not able to shave the wispy start of his mustache without scraping his whole face raw enough to sting. She had wildly overestimated his appeal to his classmates when she assumed, “You’re going to start dating soon and whatever you do or tell you father and me, you need to know how to prevent an accident.”

Starsky had not understood what she was getting at until she pulled a box of condoms out of her apron and brandished one in his face. He had then spent a miserable few minutes that felt like hours with his ice cream melting and his pie turning into a soggy mess as his mother had explained how to use it and impressed on him the dire consequences that would almost certainly occur if he failed to do so. “It only takes one time, David, _one time_. I do not want to even think of grandchildren until Nicky is out of the house, you hear me?”

The condoms she had pressed on him before he fled the room never saw active duty, as it were, but the lesson stuck. He hadn’t forgotten a rubber once in the twenty years since, not even when he was angry at his father for dying and his mother for sending him across the country to distant relatives they didn’t even like that much. Being a novelty from New York briefly made him the most interesting boy in his class, but he’d been too angry to take the fullest advantage of that, not too angry to be stupid the few times he did.

She hadn’t told him it could happen the other way, that it took just one time with another man, too. Not that Starsky himself hadn’t figured out that he wasn’t exactly a normal guy until years later. Even if she could imagine such a thing, maybe she didn’t know that it could be like it is with him and Hutch. Just one time, one drunken fumble that Hutch obviously doesn’t even remember and Starsky didn’t recall himself until he staggered his way into the bathroom the next morning, looked down at his own hand on his dick, and gotten a weird sense of déjà vu. The one mistake that Starsky had always promised himself he’d never make, especially not as a cop and especially not with his partner, and then he made it. He only remembers flashes of it, images and sounds and an emotion so huge and raw it was painful to hold in his chest.

The world had unexpectedly kept going, Hutch treating him the same as always, not reacting to any of the subtle hints Starsky dropped that something big might have happened that night, but Starsky was stuck with the terrible, somewhat fuzzy knowledge that having Hutch was as good as he had imagined it might be.

They had gotten back to their usual relationship without a seam visible from the outside, and Starsky had been hoping that he would eventually stop noticing the difference of _before_ and _after_ his barely acknowledged desires had been lived out. But once was enough, and Madam Balandin was right; the life he could have lived _before_ was lost. He can never forget and never move on completely.

He’s been gutted by anger and melancholy every time Hutch went on a date for months, telling himself it’s just envy, but it’s not. He felt the same way even when he went out on a few dates, even when he got laid. It’s jealousy that someone else gets Hutch, yes, and hurt that Hutch wants someone else, but there is some envy under it all. Not envy over the girls who fall over Hutch; envy that Hutch got to forget as if their night together never happened. Starsky’s been so resentful that he’s the only one in the world who was affected by what happened that he’s tried to pretend it never did—to put in in his junk drawer with all the other stuff he forgets about until the next time he needs to find a place to put a loose button he’ll never use but won’t throw away just in case. But it happened, and the memories don’t stay in the junk drawer. They keep infesting his thoughts—mental bedbugs he rediscovers every time he starts to think they’re gone for good, like the sound of Hutch gasping in his ear intruding on his movie date just last Saturday. He hadn’t called her back, told himself she wasn’t the right one to blot out those memories and quash his stupid crush once and for all, but there won’t be a right one. Not anymore.

Now that he’s accepted that, Starsky just has to decide how he’s going to live with the aftermath.

 

* * *

 

After a lot of thought during meals and boring tasks that made him spacey enough that both Hutch and Dobey wanted to send him back to the hospital for another concussion check, Starsky has a plan. He’s going to tell Hutch. Better to know Hutch’s reaction and get it over with than to repress and live in fear of getting found out.

Unfortunately for him, the first step is to prepare for the worst. Even if the worst doesn’t happen, Starsky has to be ready for this whole thing to blow up in his face. This involves imagining in panoramic detail the scenarios where Hutch asks for a different partner, or gets him fired, or publically outs him—and trying to find ways to survive them. He had been basing a lot of contingency plans on going back home before he realized that Hutch could tell his mother. Starsky doesn't think that he would, even if Hutch did end up hating him, but nor does he have any great ideas for uprooting his life in California that don’t pass through his mother’s apartment. If it comes to that, he’ll have to hope his mother doesn’t hate him or he’ll have to sleep in his car.  

He’s probably being unfair to Hutch, who is really the most decent guy Starsky has ever met. _Hutch_ had chastised _Starsky_ for being too harsh on John Blaine for hiding his sexuality, a scenario Starsky looks back on with no small amount of irony and a great deal more self-awareness about his emotional state than he had at the time. But he can’t be too optimistic. Hutch didn’t know John. It’s not so hard to be understanding of a guy who’s already dead and disgraced and was barely more than an abstract notion to you before that. It’s different when it’s your best friend and the truth changes practically every moment of your life for the past few years. Hutch’s first reaction won’t be cruel, definitely not, but how long will it take him to get paranoid and angry wondering about all the times Starsky put his hands on him? Or if he doesn’t freak out, how long before the awkwardness and avoidance make Hutch think it’s best if they just cut each other out of their lives completely? And how many times will Dobey and Huggy and every other officer in the precinct plus all their neighbors and friends ask Hutch what the hell happened to break up their partnership before Hutch tells them the truth? Whatever Hutch believes in theory about homosexuality, in practice it’ll all end up the same way: with Starsky’s life turned inside out and upside down and probably hung out for all the world to see.

These thought experiments are so depressing that he struggles to keep his mood normal and ends up leaning desperately into Hutch’s casual affection. Hutch stops teasing him about brain damage and starts quietly asking Starsky if he’s cracking up. Starsky sees his concern as a positive, though; maybe it’ll help forestall some of the worst reactions to learning his partner is in love with him.

Then he has to make sure that they don’t have any active cases that would force Hutch to work with him afterward out of a sense of duty. They work a couple of B&Es that don’t require half of the amount of effort he puts into them, but they’re a much-needed distraction. Sadly, the culprits are inexperienced and sloppy, and they confess practically before they get the cuffs on them. On the other hand, they both have to testify in court about the arson case and also for a rare drug possession case in which the defendant is well off enough to hire a lawyer to contest the charges. They get a conviction on the first but the AG loses his nerve on the second, making a deal with the defense attorney to switch the charges for a lesser guilty plea and community service. They go to Huggy’s afterward and spend a refreshingly normal evening lamenting the flaws in the system and playing careless games of pool. Hutch gets buzzed and absent-mindedly sings along to a couple of songs playing on the jukebox. He’s adorable, and it makes Starsky so sick with anxiety that he stress eats the rest of Hutch’s fries and then makes his way through two bowls of bar snacks before Huggy cuts him off.

Then it occurs to Starsky that he needs to lay some groundwork for why he would leave suddenly, in case he has to, so people don’t ask and give Hutch a reason to spread the truth around. So when Huggy asks him what’s eating him for the third time that week, Starsky acts his ass off begrudgingly confessing that his mother is having some health issues and he’s worried she’ll end up having trouble making ends meet. He also shares these concerns with Dobey, his landlord, and the clerk at the corner convenience store who he always buys milk from on Saturday mornings when he discovers his last carton has gone bad without his noticing. He also drops hints with some of the uniforms. When he starts a faux-casual conversation with Norden, though, he suddenly remembers the other thing that Madam Balandin told him.

“Hey, Norden, you remember that weird fortune teller at the pier?”

Norden blinks out of his slump at the front desk. “The freaky bone lady? Did she get brought in?”

“Uh, no. I just remembered, she said to tell you to apologize to your family.”

His brow furrows. He looks like a baby that looks like Winston Churchill. “What’s that about?”

“I don’t know. Well,” Starsky thinks back through all the emotionally devastating revelations. “I think she actually said to stop being an ass to them.”

“Oh.” After a beat, Norden’s face goes slack and white. “Oh, shit. How did she—oh, no.” He visibly restrains himself from grabbing the desk phone right then. “Did she say anything else, sir? About—you know.”

“Nothing about you, just about my mom being sick. Hey, was she right? About your thing? You know what she meant?”

It’s a leading question; he obviously has something specific in mind. Norden nods jerkily and pleads with his eyes for Starsky to drop the subject, which he does not. “Yes, you know, or yes, she was right?”

“Yes to both. Can we not talk about this anymore? Sir,” Norden adds hastily. “Sorry, sir.”

Starsky leaves him alone but thinks about it the rest of the afternoon. Hutch jokes about him mooning over the new civilian admin, who is also an east coast Jew and has already taken a disliking to Starsky, which he would normally find irresistible but, even if it weren’t for the other thing, she’s from _Connecticut_. It had not occurred to him before now that there is a chance – small, he’s sure, but a chance - that Hutch might not react badly. They’ve both had one-sided crushes on people they work with before and helped each other adapt to rejection while remaining professional. Madam Balandin _had_ told Hutch he would have to make a choice. Starsky assumed it would be a choice between just getting a new partner and completely ruining Starsky’s life, but maybe it would be a choice between splitting up the partnership and sticking with it. Hutch is so compassionate with everybody else, surely he could find some compassion for his partner’s unwelcome feelings for him. If Starsky could make him understand that he doesn’t want to feel this way any more than Hutch wants him to, maybe they could salvage their friendship.

Nearly three months after the day at the boardwalk, Starsky can’t find any other reason to postpone. He waits until a Friday before they’re scheduled to be off for three days, so Hutch will have plenty of time and space to figure out how he wants to handle it. As casual as anything, he suggests Hutch come over to his place after their shift ends.

“Why don’t we go to Huggy’s? He just got in new darts and I want to smoke you before you have any excuses for losing.” Hutch shoots him a grin across the desks, unaware how far he is off the script Starsky had thought this conversation would have.

“Oh. I mean, yeah, sure. We can go to Huggy’s.” Absurdly, Starsky feels more anxious for having his confession postponed. He puts on a smile anyway. “Dinner and darts at Huggy’s, sounds fine.”

 “Starsky, my finely honed detective’s instincts are telling me you don’t want to go to Huggy’s for some reason.”

Sighing for all of his plans going off the rails this early, Starsky admits, “I wanted to talk to you about something. Privately.”

Hutch sobers up even further. “I see. Okay, let’s go to your place then.”

“Okay.”

They work silently for a few minutes. The air between them feels as heavy and awful as the knot in Starsky’s stomach. “You know what? Let’s go to Huggy’s first. We just won’t stay late.”

Hutch agrees, and they duly head over to the Pits after clocking out. Starsky tells himself he has to make the most of this, just in case this is the last time Hutch rides in his car, the last time they trade off buying burgers from Huggy that Hutch always complains about and Starsky always berates him for complaining about. It’s not like it used to be, since they both know that they’re killing time before a conversation serious enough that Starsky wouldn’t even say what it was about at the precinct, but it’s still good. Starsky forces himself to put the matter out of his mind and accuses Huggy of conspiring with Hutch when Starsky loses at darts like it was any other Friday night. He must have pulled it off because Huggy is confused when they get up to leave right after seven.

The drive is short and quiet. The knot in Starsky’s stomach has multiplied or expanded or something, making him feel like one big tangled mess of rope. It’s worse than waiting to hear if his dad would make it. He wishes for a cigarette, a shot of tequila, anything that people say makes you feel calmer.

Then they’re in his apartment and Hutch is watching him, face unreadable, hands still in the pockets of the coat he hasn’t taken off. Starsky can’t remember how he was going to start his speech. “Beer,” he blurts, and goes into the kitchen to get a couple of bottles out of the fridge.

Hutch accepts one. “What did you want to talk about, Starsk?”

Like a coward, Starsky looks at his beer instead of at him. “Remember when you told me not to get hung up on what that fortune teller said?”

“You—what?”

“You know, down at the pier?”

“I know what you’re talking about,” Hutch says tersely. “That was months ago! Are you telling me you’ve been obsessing for months over some malarkey?”

“Malarkey?”

“You’re going to leave over _that_?”

“I’m not—what are you talking about?”

“Look, sorry to interrupt but I know you’ve been telling everybody your mother is sick.” Hutch glares at him. “She isn’t sick, Starsky, so you can just tell me the real reason you’re leaving.”

He should have realized that word would get back to Hutch sooner or later. “Okay, yeah, that was a lie. But I’m not leaving, Hutch, I swear. Or I don’t want to, anyway.”

“Then what’s going on? Come on, Starsk. You know you can tell me and we’ll figure it out, whatever it is. Me and thee, right?” Hutch tips his beer forward and Starsky clinks his bottle against it automatically. There’s concern in his eyes but Hutch is smiling encouragingly, ready to share whatever load Starsky’s carrying.

“I love you.” The thought falls out of his mouth before he can catch it.

“I love you, too.” Hutch says it easily, his face softening from the exchange. “This must be really serious stuff, huh? Come on, you can tell me.”

It feels like being shot, a comparison Starsky is more qualified than most to make. He breathes through it. “No, that’s not—okay.” He puts his beer down and scrubs his hands over his face. “Okay. I’m not drunk. I don’t have a concussion. I’m being totally serious here, alright?”

“Okay,” Hutch agrees, clearly puzzled but still serious as a heart attack. Starsky is starting to feel light-headed and can feel his pounding pulse all the way down his arms, so that might be appropriate.

He swallows hard. His voice comes out very quiet. “Hutch, I love you.”

They stand close together all the time, which is convenient for a lot of things, but lately has been torturous for Starsky to keep doing. Tonight, it’s convenient again.

“Don’t hate me, okay?” Hutch still looks puzzled when Starsky puts his hands on his shoulders and lightly tugs him forward into a kiss. He’s kissed Hutch before and Hutch has kissed him, silly smacks on the cheek and mouth and tender signs of affection pressed to heads and hands when one of them ends up spending a night in the hospital. Really kissing Hutch is different.

It’s not a kiss that would win competitions. Hutch seems to be reacting out of reflex more than any intent on his part, but if Starsky ever thought that kissing a man wouldn’t be as consuming as kissing a woman, he was wrong. The gentle press of lips feels dramatic, like there should be a swell of music over it. He can feel Hutch’s invisible stubble against his upper lip and instantly wants to rub their sandpapery cheeks together, not even because it’s sexy, but just to know what it would feel like. He's never kissed another man before to find out. Hutch tastes like beer, smells like the last traces of his familiar aftershave and his leather jacket. Even through his terror, the traces of alcohol on Hutch’s mouth could get Starsky drunk.

Starsky keeps his eyes closed for a second after pulling away. “It’s okay,” he says nonsensically. “It’s just you should know. I don’t think you’re— _I’m_ not. I’m not going to bug you about it or anything. I can—”

“Starsky,” Hutch interrupts, pressing on his chest with the hand holding his beer. It leaves a cold drop of condensation on his shirt.

Starsky jerks farther away. “It’s okay! I’m not gay, it’s not like I can’t—I can get over it. I will. I’m not gay.” Hutch has grabbed his wrist, not letting him go, even pulling against Starsky’s efforts to give him space. He looks annoyed.

“Yeah, me, neither,” he says. Then he hits Starsky in the chin with his bottle trying to tip it up. As kisses go, it’s worse than the first. As an act, it sends a wave of released tension through Starsky so intense that he literally gets weak at the knees.

Hutch lets go of his wrist and spreads his hand over the nape of his neck instead, guiding him into an angle where their noses don’t bump together. Starsky has seen Hutch kiss his girlfriends; he knows exactly what this looks like from the outside. He drops one of his hands down to Hutch’s waist to complete the picture, spreading his fingers over his ribs and getting a bizarre thrill at how small his hands suddenly seem. As thin as he is, Hutch is still a big guy. He’s not that much taller, really, but he’s pressing close enough that Starsky has to tip his head back and lean a little weight onto Hutch to maintain his balance. It’s not exactly comfortable, but it’s nice. Starsky can see why women like a tall man.

“Wait, wait.” Starsky steps back but keeps a grip on Hutch’s jacket so he doesn’t go too far. “What’s happening?”

“Well, I admit I’m doing some catching up, but I think we’re gambling our careers on each other because of something a carnival sideshow act said to you three months ago.”

There's a weightless numbness in his limbs that Starsky usually associates with IV narcotics, and he’s sure he’s got a dopey smile to match. “It sounds bad when you say it like that.”

“It’s very stupid,” Hutch says, and pulls his gaze from Starsky’s mouth. “Although she was sort of right about me, I guess. Not that it was much of a choice. I thought you were _leaving_.” He laughs a little at that, like anything would be better than that horror.

“Wait, you’re not being noble, are you? I really want to stay, I was just planning ahead for if you asked me to leave or got me fired. I wouldn’t leave because you aren’t interested.”

Hutch does pull away then. “You thought I might do that to you? What kind of man do you think I am, Starsky?” No one does mortally-offended-white-man voice like Kenneth Hutchinson. He gets the best service in restaurants, a perk of their friendship Starsky hadn’t thought to mourn the loss of, but he’s pleased he won’t have to now.

“I don’t know, spending your professional life around a guy who’s in love with you when you’re not in love with him is a lot to ask!” Starsky will never tell Hutch that it hadn’t occurred to him that Hutch actually could rise to that level of selflessness until just last week. “But really, are you just being nice? Because you don’t have to.”

“I would do a hell of a lot for you, but I wouldn’t risk both our careers and our lives to spare your feelings, pal.” After taking a swig of beer and smacking the bottle down on the table, Hutch starts wrenching off his jacket. “Get you fired—how many times have I told you, Starsk? Me and thee!”

“So you really—”

“Yes! Yes,” he repeats, more quietly. “It is completely crazy and I don’t know if it’s the right thing to do, it’s not like it’s something I’ve even thought about before, and maybe it’s just because it’s you and me like it always is, but this feels—”

Hutch runs out of words and sighs. “I think you’re the cutest boy in our class. Want to go steady?”

“Well,” Starsky shrugs with feigned nonchalance. He’s pretty sure God has intervened on his behalf, which is real big of Him considering Starsky hasn’t gone to temple since he left New York and they were never a particularly observant family. He’s not sure he would even know how to keep kosher if he wanted to. “I did risk _my_ career for you, technically, so I might as well.”

“I regret this already.” But Hutch is reeling him into an embrace as he says it, maybe feeling as high on undirected adrenalin as Starsky is.

It’s a hug a lot like others they’ve given each other over the years, orchestrated around the shoulder holsters they’re still wearing, but it’s different. This time, there’s no one to look askance and nothing to hide. Starsky turns his face into Hutch’s neck and holds tight enough to steady his trembling hands. He squeezes his eyes shut against a sudden threat of tears he doesn’t quite understand. This is so much more than he imagined he could hope for, let alone have. He might be more relieved and happier than he’s ever been in his life, but it’s as if the aftershocks of every single moment of paralyzing fear he’s experienced in the past few months is hitting him all at once.

Hutch doesn’t let go, supports as much weight as Starsky leans on him. He can carry his whole body weight in a pinch, Starsky knows, but Hutch has strained his back twice in the past year, so Starsky chastises himself to not be such a swooning Mary. “Sorry,” he says against Hutch’s collarbone. “But I’ve been so scared, Hutch, you don’t know. I thought it was all over. I thought you would hate me. I was going to have to go home and sleep on my mom’s couch. I wasn’t ever going to see you again, Hutch.”

“But it’s not over.” Hutch’s voice isn’t as steady as it usually is and his arms tighten more fiercely. “I’m not going anywhere and neither are you. You’re okay now. It’s all okay, honey.”

There’s a pause while they both digest that. Maybe Hutch can feel Starsky’s smile because he relaxes a bit and chuckles. “Okay, that was weird.” He strokes a hand through his hair so Starsky raises his head. “I guess you’ll always be Starsky to me.”

He says that, but then Hutch kisses him again. It’s still a revelation the third time around. They get it right from the start this time, at least; it feels like all of the years they’ve been together. He gets the urge again to rub their cheeks together, but contents himself to cup Hutch’s jaw and brush his thumb over his stubble. As Starsky shifts his weight, they become aware of the press of their bodies, the kiss gets darker, heavier. He knows how to give stubble burn, but now he’s really looking forward to getting it.

Hutch makes a noise that Starsky can feel rumbling through him to his groin. “You timed this for a long weekend off duty so you could get away clean, huh? Well, if you don’t have any plans anymore, I can think of a lot better ways to spend three days off.”

Giving in again to his newfound stubble fixation, Starsky scrapes a teasing bite over Hutch’s chin. “Lucky for you, I’m easy.”

“Lucky for both of us, nobody will be shocked how much time we’re going to spend together.”

Already backing toward his bedroom and dragging Hutch with him, Starsky jokes, “Maybe we’ll make it to the bed this time.”

It takes a couple seconds for Hutch to hear that, but it derails him entirely. Starsky almost trips over his own feet from the sudden stop. “This time?”

“Oh, uh, I guess you really don’t remember. You know when we got blackout drunk after we closed the Cabello murders? We kind of”—Starsky makes a jerking off gesture—“helped each other out.”

This news seems to be harder for Hutch to process than Starsky’s confession was. “We had sex a year ago?”

“Do hand jobs really count?”

“I forgot the first time we slept together?”

“We were drunk, just giving each other a hand—it’s not the official first time.”

Making a weird leap in logic, Hutch concludes peevishly, “So it wasn’t even good the first time we slept together!”

“Hutch!” Starsky braces his arms on Hutch’s shoulders. They look so good framed with his holster straps, and it’s crazy that he gets to look now. “I don’t remember a lot of details but it was great. It was so good, I realized I was in love with my best friend. Madam Balandin forced me to do something about it, but that was it for me. Look, I wouldn’t say it ruined me entirely for women, but I would bet based on that performance that you definitely _could_ ruin me for women, and I’d really like you to start trying now.”

That gets Hutch’s head back on track. “Sorry, I just can’t believe I forgot that.” He copies Starsky’s move from earlier, cupping his jaw and caressing his cheek. He must not mind the heavy stubble because his hand shifts down, thumb brushing Starsky’s lower lip. Shamelessly cribbing from one of his old girlfriends, Starsky lets it draw his lip down and just barely presses his tongue against the pad. Hutch’s eyes go promisingly dark. “I guess I’ve got a lot of lost time to make up for.”

The fourth kiss is also perfect, hot and rich with promise, but Starsky keeps it lingering on the cusp instead of immediately pressing deeper. He fully intends to put out on the first date and has no idea what will come after they go back to work on Tuesday, no idea how this is going to work, but he isn’t worried about wringing every bit of pleasure he can out of tonight. He’s on the path and Hutch is with him; they’ll figure it out.

“No rush,” he murmurs against Hutch’s mouth, still pulling him toward the bedroom. He knows Hutch will understand what he means. “We’ve got time.”


End file.
